Bibliophilia
by Skyhiatrist
Summary: One who is addicted to collecting books A condition suffered by those into extremeescapism. Phoebecentric. The rating's there for a reason people.


**A/N: Please keep an open mind when reading this. It's quite heartfelt, for me at least. - _Sky._**

**Bibliophilia**

Static crackled from the aged radio as the small girl sat at her poorly lit desk, a pencil between her fingers and her tongue between her teeth. She scribbled furiously on the paper in front of her, almost maniacally as she scored line after line of heavy thick carbon through the words she had written not ten minutes previous. Black scars lines the page, tearing through the thin sheet and onto the scratched and broken wood beneath. Not a thing was legible anymore, but still the girl continued her fevered slashing, harder and faster, until the paper was just a creased and ragged square of mess and sweat beaded her worried brow. Then, quite calmly, she set her pencil down and screwed the paper into a tiny ball, before dropping it nonchalantly into her waste paper basket.

She pushed her chair out from beneath the desk and got rather shakily to her feet. She was quite hungry, but there had been so much she felt compelled to do the minute she got in from work that she had not yet found the time to eat. Carefully, she edged her way over to a large and towering bookcase that sat in the corner of her room that was so heavy with tomes that the shelves sagged in the middle. It was so adverse to the rest of the decor and the girl knew it, but it didn't matter because she _needed_ it. There were hardbacks and paperbacks, and the top shelf was crammed to bursting with large non-fiction books that detailed a myriad of pointless information the girl knew she would never ever need.

She had gotten to the point now where there was simply not enough room for her ever expanding collection, but she couldn't stop herself. Every day, without fail, another volume was added to her collection, be it romance or horror or thriller or whatever, just as long as she could read it and have it and maybe some day come back to it if she thought it was any good. Most of her books now came from thrift stores as she knew she had to be careful with her money, and she couldn't be spending near enough thirty bucks on a glossy book just because the smallest sentence in an otherwise uninteresting blurb appealed to her nature. Besides, there was something almost magical about owning a book that had once belonged to someone else, as it was physical evidence that some things could live forever. Perhaps someone had loved the story that she now held between her pale hands, but they had passed on, and with it their book had moved on to a new person who could love and cherish it just as dearly. Phoebe realised that there was so much more to books than just words.

Now the books had started to spill over onto her carpet, stacked up beside the bookcase to show that they were just as important as the rest. Some were children's books, entirely soppy and always with a happy outcome that Phoebe held onto as though they were truthful testimonies. Proof, if you will, that sometimes life could have a happy ending even in the darkest of times. Others were not so cheerful, with their pages filled with pain and heartache that could never be resolved, that served to remind Phoebe that though she may feel bad at least she wasn't alone.

There was, however much she hated to admit it, one book that Phoebe prized above all the others. She had read it more than twenty times, and had only recently allowed it to be placed on her bookshelf, whereas before it had been with her permanently wherever she went. And what pained her the most about it, what made her cry the hardest as she read it, even through some of it's lighter chapters, was that she didn't love it for it's content. She enjoyed the story greatly, yes, and it was definitely one of her favourites, but what really made her want to read it again and again until it's pages were worn and frayed, was the fact that it had been given to her by the one she was so desperately in love with. It must have been nearly five years now, when they were both fifteen, that the book had been pressed into her hands. "Read it," her love had said. "It'll make you smile."

It hadn't. It had made her cry and weep and scream because although it was given to her as a kindly gesture, it wasn't what Phoebe had wanted. It wasn't a whispered confession of love, it wasn't a promise to be with her always. It was a book about fantasy and magic, where dreams came true and an unseeming man was the most unlikely of heroes. It was a book about travelling a globe you swore to never see, about giving in to your fears and swallowing your pride, and ultimately about coming through much stronger than anyone ever thought you would. It spoke to Phoebe on a hundred levels, but not one of those levels told her 'I love you.' She pulled it from the shelf and sat herself back down at her desk, to read it on a lonesome Tuesday night.

She pulled back the cover to expose the copyright announcements and dedications. She felt a small pang of guilt, as she always did, that she never considered the author of the work. This was his imagination on paper for everyone to see, but somehow to Phoebe she felt as though she were the only one who ever saw his words for what they really were. Or weren't perhaps, as the book clearly meant so much more to her than the author had ever intended. She flipped the page over, trying to ignore the rage that was brewing in her gut that the author dare pretend that this work was his. She wanted it to be hers, she wanted to snatch it away from him and surround herself with the words, words that her love had given to her, words that she wanted so much. Maybe someday she would herself write a book, maybe more to equal her collection, but the shame of opening herself so honestly to so many strangers put an unbreakable barrier between herself and her pen.

The first page started so majestically, tricking the reader into thinking there was as much deep thinking to come, but Phoebe had been fooled once and she already knew what was coming. Once she had broken beyond the beautiful descriptions of the world that lived only inside an old man's mind, she knew there was frivolousness and light-hearted wit that, and she adored the author for this, never really abandoned the seriousness of it all. She wondered how her love had felt, reading the crude swear-words and blatantly simple plays on the words and laughing and loving and hoping that the story ended well. She wondered what in it her love had though would appeal to Phoebe so, especially as she had always presented herself to be a rather serious and straightforward individual with a level head on her shoulders. When had her love realised that Phoebe would in fact _enjoy_ this charming tale, despite the way she seemed to be? Phoebe had fallen even deeper in love that day, the day she realised that whom she so adored had been looking further beneath her fragile surface all along.

She soon reached the end of the psuedo-prologue; she knew it so well that she didn't really even have to look at the page. Staring at the large chunks of steady writing now, Phoebe smiled, knowing the undulation of every up and down that was to come and savouring every second of the excitement that she was about to feel. And then, almost primly she closed the book and set it daintily to one side, before leaning down into her waste-paper basket quite hurriedly to snatch out the piece of paper she had been working on so feverously before. She left it screwed into a ball as she darted over to a solitary shelf that was screwed to her wall, where she gathered up a candle and some matches and set them on her desk. Paranoia had consumed her, as it always did, and even though the words were so marred that they could never be read it did not stop her fretting. With her eye on the tiny scrap of smudged paper the whole time, Phoebe lit a match and applied the flame to the wick of the candle before her, which it was obvious to see had once been quite large, but repeated burnings had almost melted it down to a stub. Then, as though she were doing nothing quite so out of the ordinary, she unscrewed the paper a little until it was tapered out to a point which she could wave through the flame until it caught fire. And then she sat and watched the flame as it ate her words and burned closer to her fingers, burning her secret to ash to prevent anyone from ever seeing it. The heat burned her fingers, but she couldn't let go, not until she knew that every last word was gone away. Then she dropped the stub of paper and let it turn to cinder on her desk, adding to the already quite prominent scorch mark from all the previous paper burning hence.

As soon as she was satisfied that the paper was now nothing more than dust, Phoebe returned to her book and read for nothing more than a few minutes before she felt a tightening in her gut. Her craving was setting in once more, but as she glanced at her clock she came to a terrible conclusion. It was almost ten in the evening, and every book shop in town would be closed now save for the one in the more decayed parts of the city. She knew what it really was, but a house of negotiable affection masquerading as a book shop was still a book shop underneath, and though the tomes may be no more than a crude disguise for what was really going on in the upper floors, Phoebe knew the proprietor well and knew that she would as soon sell a book for a buck as her body. Phoebe closed her novel for a second time, and pulled her denim jacket from the back of her chair.

It was dark, and very late, but as ever Phoebe's parents raised no objections to her night time venture. They never did, and Phoebe had taken to wondering if it was simply because they didn't care, or that there were more serious underlying problems that caused her parents to have little time for anything else. Once, they had seemed so in love, but now, like most couples, Phoebe noted with dismay, they were drifting apart and hating each other for cementing themselves into a rut they despised. She stepped out onto the street, the cold hitting her like a strike to the chest, and wondered if it was really worth it. Then she thought about her needs, and decided that it was.

Phoebe didn't need to think about what drove her to collect more and more stories. It was pure escapism. A change to run away from her feelings and share in someone else's for a change, and she had developed a way of identifying with the protagonist right from the outset. She felt every little glimmer of hope in their fictional hearts, as well as their fears and sorrow, but ultimately, their happiness, because somehow everything always seemed to turn out all right in the end. In the rare cases when Phoebe would buy a book without a happy ending, or at least the kind of ending that left her unsatisfied and wanting more, she would shelve these and then she would lay awake for hours, rewriting the ending in her head until everything worked out fine, in the story at least. She just needed to know that the suffering was worth it, or there would be no point suffering at all.

It took her near enough twenty minutes to reach her destination, during which time she was shouted and hollered at by almost every car that passed by. At the tender age of twenty, she had now blossomed into a beautiful Asian flower, and though she knew she was pretty she failed to see how it could ever matter. She wanted to be known for her smarts and not her looks, and she wanted to be loved by Helga and no one else. She sighed, crossed the street, and entered the dark and dingy shop.

Aretha, who owned the shop, glanced up only once at her newest customer. Though Phoebe was definitely a change from the usual suited and nervous looking clientele of her shop, Aretha knew Phoebe too well to tell her to go away. She turned her eyes back down to her appointment book and allowed Phoebe to browse that which she always thought would be the last reason why anyone would ever enter her shop. Phoebe flicked through a couple of books that had been there since the day she had innocently stumbled into what she had thought was _just_ a second-hand book shop, before turning to the woman of ill-refute who was now her closest friend.

"Anything new?" she asked lightly.

"Have I ever?" Aretha replied. Phoebe hunched her shoulders, firm in the knowledge that she would _have_ to buy something. Something else had to be added to her collection, another story that perhaps this time would mirror her own, and in the end the girl gets _her_ girl, because in this day and age a love story should be the most open-minded thing in the world. She picked up something that she had glanced over a thousand times, and pried open the cover to look at the pencilled-in price on the inside. Her newest fix was to cost her a dollar fifty.

"I'll have this one," she said, rummaging in her pocket for the change. Aretha nodded, and fixed Phoebe with a sympathetic smile.

"It won't replace her honey," she said softly.

"Nothing will," Phoebe agreed, handing over the coins, "but she's not... _that_ way. She's not a freak like me."

Aretha stared. She had seen every kind of depravity come through the door of her shop but she had never thought of Phoebe as perverse for one second.

"You listen to me girl, don't you ever be ashamed of who you are. The love you got for that girl is so pure it makes me want to throttle you sometimes, and it's just as real as the love between a girl and a guy. Now don't you ever let me hear you call yourself that again, you understand?"

"Yes," Phoebe replied meekly, scooping her book into her arms. She turned to leave, but then she paused without looking back.

"Incidentally..." she began.

"She's with a client right now," Aretha said. "But you can see her in about ten minutes."

Phoebe nodded and settled herself on a chair to wait. She passed the time by reading through the first chapter of her new book, but her mind was drifting elsewhere. She was fixated on her favourite book, safe in the knowledge of what was about to come and knowing that she didn't really need the book in her hands to read it. She thought of the protagonist's trouble, and of how he was going to try to escape his orders. And then she thought of his defeat, of how he would finally give in and do what was asked of him. And so the story would continue, from the funny to the terrifying, and she would read every word as though it were new to her, and perhaps, maybe the outcome would be different.

She was roused to her senses by Aretha's shouts.

"Helga!" she called up that dimly lit stairs. "Helga, Phoebe's here!"

Phoebe nervously smoothed her hair and rather ashamedly loosened the top button of her shirt. Aretha frowned at her, but in that moment Phoebe didn't care. She was caught up in her anticipation of the seeing the blonde beauty that plagued every one of her dreams. She wanted her so badly that she didn't care how desperate she seemed because the plain old truth was that she _was_ desperate to be in Helga's arms. She heard footsteps inching ever closer, sharp, loud _thunks _caused by stiletto on wood. Phoebe bit her lip.

Helga stepped into the room, wearing nothing more than those sleek black shoes and a silken nightgown that no doubt hid the very same thing that Phoebe longed to gaze upon. Skimpy, lacy underwear that Helga wore purely for the benefit of her clients and her hate for herself. "What are you doing here?" she demanded of Phoebe, pulling her nightgown tighter around her curvy frame, clearly so ashamed.

"I... I came to.. I came to buy a book," Phoebe stammered, trying to ignore Aretha's looks from the corner of her eye.

"You know this isn't that kind of book shop Pheebs," Helga sighed in an irritated voice.

"I know," Phoebe said, looking down to the floor. "I'm worried about you Helga. You're better than this." Aretha didn't object to this statement, because Phoebe knew that Aretha also believed it. Helga was better than being nothing more than a common hooker, but her self esteem had been crushed by years of rejection, and her ambitions had been slaughtered by her only desire being that which she couldn't have.

"You don't know anything about me," Helga spat, sweeping across the floor to snatch up the appointment book, a mere shadow of the delicate girl Phoebe had fallen for not five years hence.

"I do," Phoebe said quietly, ignoring the instinct to rush over to her love and sweep her into the tightest embrace. "I know more than you give me credit for."

Helga rolled her eyes. "Why don't you just leave me alone?" she snapped.

"I can't," Phoebe said, stopping herself short of saying 'because I love you.'.

"Well I wish you would... I don't want you here when..." Helga trailed off, suddenly ashamed, but Phoebe just felt a flair of anger spark up in her chest.

"When Arnold gets here?" she retorted. "You know he's not coming, don't you? You know that just because he fell in here drunkenly one time two years ago it doesn't mean he's coming back! And besides, even if he did, he wouldn't choose you," she added hurtfully before she could stop herself.

"Why not?" Helga shouted, bursting into tears.

"Because he loves you!" Phoebe shouted back, throwing out something she vowed she would always keep to herself. Something that would dash her chances of happiness for ever.

"He... he does?" Helga said, her expression of happiness suddenly dissolving into one of pure, raw delight. "He loves me?"

"Yes," Phoebe said solemnly, feeling Aretha's empathetic eyes on her. "Go and get dressed and stop doing this to yourself. Go and see the damn boy, he loves you," she said to Helga's already retreating back, "and so do I."

If Helga heard Phoebe's whispered confession, she didn't stop. Phoebe followed Helga all the way to Arnold's, but left before her love had knocked on the door of the boarding house. She couldn't bear to see what was about to happen.

Instead, Phoebe went home and finished the rest of her favourite book. She stayed with the main character through everything, and felt an intense relief wash over her at the end. Because, deep down, what she really loved about this book was it's ending. It wasn't happy, and it wasn't sad. It had another novel to follow, one that Phoebe vowed to never ever read.

This book was, as was Phoebe's life, Part One Of Two. This book had a sequel.

_**FIN**_

**A/N: In case you're wondering, the book Phoebe is reading in this story is 'The Colour of Magic' by Terry Pratchett._ - Sky._**


End file.
